When you read this quote what are your thoughts? Imagine walking into a classroom and you have something to say, something important about whom you are, and your teacher doesn’t see you? Not that he/she does not physically see you…he/she does not see your humanity. What would you feel? What would you think? How would you react? Many children in the education system experience invisibility. Educators click their tongue’s and say, “you know he/she is homeless, we can’t expect too much,” or “the school can only do so much, how can they expect us to teach them?” These quotes are just a small sampling of what is said in many a teacher break room and staff meetings. Teachers have abdicated their responsibility for teaching our children because they do not feel like they are “our children.”
The Homelessness Research Institute projects an increase of approximately 74,000 people to the homeless count over the next 3 years. This will bring the current number of over 1.5 million to over 1.65 million. Homelessness no longer looks like poor, single, addicted men. The face of homelessness is children.
I had the opportunity to hear a keynote speech by Dr. Jeff Duncan- Andrade. He mentioned Tupac Shakur’s poem, The Rose that Grew from Concrete. Dr. Duncan-Andrade posed a question. Whose fault is it if the rose does not grow? Children who experience homelessness are the proverbial “rose in the concrete.” Whose fault is it if our children who are homeless do not learn? How does the cycle of poverty and homeless end if the children are invisible? How does the educational system respect the experiences of the child living in a homeless situation? Do we bring them to school and act like the life outside of school does not exist? How do we change a system that is inherently stacked? My final question…why should we care about what happens to the rose that grows in concrete?
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